Hacking

Hacker attitudes

Several subgroups of the computer underground with different attitudes and aims use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not agree. Eric S. Raymond (author of The New Hacker's Dictionary) advocates that members of the computer underground should be called crackers. Yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by Raymond himself. Instead of a hacker/cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat, grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to Raymond, they usually reserve the term cracker. According to (Clifford R.D. 2006) a cracker or cracking is to "gain unauthorized access to a computer in order to commit another crime such as destroying information contained in that system".^[9] These subgroups may also be defined by the legal status of their activities.^[10]

White hat

A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons, for instance testing their own security system. This classification also includes individuals who perform penetration tests and vulnerability assessments within a contractual agreement. Often, this type of 'white hat' hacker is called an ethical hacker. The International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, also known as the EC-Council has developed certifications, courseware, classes, and online training covering the diverse arena of Ethical Hacking.^[10]

Black hat

A black hat hacker, sometimes called a cracker, is someone who breaks computer security without authorization or uses technology (usually a computer, phone system or network) for malicious reasons such as vandalism, credit card fraud, identity theft, piracy, or other types of illegal activity.^[10][11]

Grey hat

A grey hat hacker is a combination of a Black Hat and a White Hat Hacker. A Grey Hat Hacker may surf the internet and hack into a computer system for the sole purpose of notifying the administrator that their system has been hacked, for example. Then they may offer to repair their system for a small fee.^[4]

Elite hacker

A social status among hackers, elite is used to describe the most skilled. Newly discovered exploits will circulate among these hackers. Elite groups such as Masters of Deceptionconferred a kind of credibility on their members.^{[12]:86,90,117} Elite (e.g. 31337) gives the term leet speak its name.

Script kiddie

A script kiddie is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the underlying concept—hence the term script (i.e. a prearranged plan or set of activities) kiddie (i.e. kid, child—an individual lacking knowledge and experience, immature).^[11]

Neophyte

A neophyte, "n00b", or "newbie" is someone who is new to hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of the workings of technology, and hacking.^[4]

Blue hat

A blue hat hacker is someone outside computer security consulting firms who is used to bug test a system prior to its launch, looking for exploits so they can be closed. Microsoftalso uses the term BlueHat to represent a series of security briefing events.^[13][14][15]

Hacktivist

A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a social, ideological, religious, or political message. In general, most hacktivism involves website defacement or denial-of-service attacks. In more extreme cases, hacktivism is used as tool for cyberterrorism.

Techniques

Vulnerability scanner

A vulnerability scanner is a tool used to quickly check computers on a network for known weaknesses. Hackers also commonly use port scanners. These check to see which ports on a specified computer are "open" or available to access the computer, and sometimes will detect what program or service is listening on that port, and its version number. (Note that firewalls defend computers from intruders by limiting access to ports/machines both inbound and outbound, but can still be circumvented.)

Password cracking

Password cracking is the process of recovering passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. A common approach is to repeatedly try guesses for the password.

Packet sniffer

A packet sniffer is an application that captures data packets, which can be used to capture passwords and other data in transit over the network.

Spoofing attack

A spoofing attack involves one program, system, or website successfully masquerading as another by falsifying data and thereby being treated as a trusted system by a user or another program. The purpose of this is usually to fool programs, systems, or users into revealing confidential information, such as user names and passwords, to the attacker.

Rootkit

A rootkit is designed to conceal the compromise of a computer's security, and can represent any of a set of programs which work to subvert control of an operating system from its legitimate operators. Usually, a rootkit will obscure its installation and attempt to prevent its removal through a subversion of standard system security. Rootkits may include replacements for system binaries so that it becomes impossible for the legitimate user to detect the presence of the intruder on the system by looking at process tables.

Social engineering

Social engineering is the art of getting persons to reveal sensitive information about a system. This is usually done by impersonating someone or by convincing people to believe you have permissions to obtain such information.

Trojan horses

A Trojan horse is a program which seems to be doing one thing, but is actually doing another. A trojan horse can be used to set up a back door in a computer system such that the intruder can gain access later. (The name refers to the horse from the Trojan War, with conceptually similar function of deceiving defenders into bringing an intruder inside.)

Viruses

A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Therefore, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to abiological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells.

While some are harmless or mere hoaxes most computer viruses are considered malicious.

Worms

Like a virus, a worm is also a self-replicating program. A worm differs from a virus in that it propagates through computer networks without user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Many people conflate the terms "virus" and "worm", using them both to describe any self-propagating program.

Key loggers

A key logger is a tool designed to record ('log') every keystroke on an affected machine for later retrieval. Its purpose is usually to allow the user of this tool to gain access to confidential information typed on the affected machine, such as a user's password or other private data. Some key loggers uses virus-, trojan-, and rootkit-like methods to remain active and hidden. However, some key loggers are used in legitimate ways and sometimes to even enhance computer security. As an example, a business might have a key logger on a computer used at a point of sale and data collected by the key logger could be used for catching employee fraud.

Today one of my roommate hacked Gmail account of his friend, the thing which makes me happier is he did this by himself without my help. I realized one thing today that instead of helping other its always better to inspire them to help themselves, people may think you as arrogant or rude for such things but I am damn sure that they’ll learn good things from you.

Why I am saying good to hacking for many reasons. Many of my friends at back home are hackers, some are ethical and many are not :) . The term ‘hacker’ here should be taken into broader sense. Hacker means person who breeches security of any information system and Hack is an act done by hacker to get any processed data from any information computing device. I think this is a very common term these day’s everyone is aware about hacking or ethical hacking. I am not going share those old views of hacking. The term Hacking was basically used in mid 60’s with the advent of computing devices it got popular after 90’s when ARPAnet became INTERnet.

Before sharing anything I would like share some interesting things, which we’ll call hackers. Let’s look at it first

• Original Hacker – Aficionados who born during early phase of computing i.e. 60’s with the intense of constantly checking capabilities of mainframes.
• Hardware Hacker – Innovators in 70’s played key role in bringing personnel computing to the world. They worked to decentralize the computing technology.
• Software Hackers – Basically programmers who used to create elegant means to change or create code which hampers hardware.
• Cracker-Person breaking down to security enters into someone else’s computing device though not always with bad intense, term got popular since 1980
• Microserfs – Term got popular after Douglas Coupland’s novel – Microserfs in 1995, its a marginalized group of hackers who never co-opted with security provided by Microsoft, windows 95 was first victimized OS because of these people.
• OpenSource : An ethical group which creates best possible software led to a broad community devoted to submitting free hacks openly that could then be improved by others.
• Hacktivists: Group merging hacking activity with an overt political or social posture .